We caught up with Dakn داكِنْ a producer from Ramallah, Palestine and rising talent of the Middle East electronic music scene, to talk about his musical experiences and some of the exciting artists and sounds coming from the region.

We interviewed First Aid a music producer from South Korea. His style is musical but diverse and has ranged from working with singers on the Room 606 project, to his Back to the Innermind Drum and Bass release on Noisy Meditation and all points in between.

We recently caught up with Birmingham based producer, beat-maker and visual artist Myke Forte, stalwart of the legendary Birmingham beat making collective Louis Den, his productions have featured on BBE, Eat Good, Louis Den and World Expo Records.

Two years on from the release of D.Butler’s ‘Leaves EP’ on Sign, we are pleased to release a set of remixes. The remixes come from producers spanning the globe, including First Aid from South Korea, Convert TO from Denmark, Dakn from Palestine and Birmingham’s own Myke Forte. Each remix offers a distinctive interpretation of D.Butler’s originals, keeping the characteristic melodic live instrumentation while reinventing and reinterpreting them.

For the third in the Joyful Noise series we caught up with musician, producer and label owner Robin Giorno. Robin Giorno is the man behind the Friendly Fire Music label, the Friendly Fire band, a stalwart of Birmingham reggae night Jam Jah and a regular at reggae events up and down the country.

We love Sahel Sounds. Set up by the adventurous Christopher Kirkley, it started as a project to release interesting and rare music from West Africa. This is easily epitomised by the compelling compilation Music from Saharan Cellphones (yes, that’s tracks found on cellphone memory cards).

We recently caught up with Adam Askov, co-founder of Danish label ‘count 0‘, to chat about his personal musical journey, the count 0 philosophy and how they’ve found life in the industry as an up and coming label.

Nills has crafted a mix which encompasses his two decades of involvement with producing and DJing. Melding together the various strings of his musical heritage, from the heavy influence of bass music to more melodic electronica and noise, Nills’ mix spans the breadth of his musical influences. From his early days of DJing drum ‘n’ bass and continuing through to UK Garage, Techno, Dubstep and Footwork, Nills draws on a raw edge of music that makes you want to dance to music to get lost in.

Following on from our release of Danish producer Nills’ debut EP, Downwards, we caught up with photographer Lars Mortensen, who helped develop the EP’s cover-art. With a strong interest in man-made, urban landscapes, Lars kindly took some time out to chat to us about his photographic methodology, his links with Nills and the publication of his upcoming book, In Search of Habitat.

Video for Gravity the lead track from Nills debut EP Downwards. Gravity sucks you in to its hypnotic bassline and bleeps with a dub aesthetic. The video shot by Wezism is the perfect accompaniment to the music playing on the evolving cyclical rhythm of the track with mesmerising images.

The debut album ‘Objects for an Ideal Home’ was released in 1999 which led to collaborations with Bjørk for her Vespertine album, and later two albums with Alva Noto as Opto. He has released EP´s via April, City Centre, Vertical Form and Morr Music.

Louis Den is a multifaceted organisation that looks to support and publicise the work of an international community of beat makers producing hip hop and music within the umbrella beats sub genre. This includes the Behind Closed Doors DVD magazine series, Louis Den Record Label and the Louis Den Beat Cypher events. We asked the guys for their top picks of 2014, and here’s what they came back with:

Lrsa-Bo Jandrup une artiste multimédia de Kjøbenhavn (DK), and person behind the legendary Orchard releases on the equally legendary Hobby Industries fine print. The Lrsa has worked with sound for theatre, film, dance, and a plenitude of graphical as well as fine art stuff. Recently contributing to Apparatjik installations at Serpentine Gallery and Neue Nationalgalerie etcetc.

Cro loves music, has written for a wide variety of magazines and websites, hosted his own radio show for over 8 years. He currently enjoys playing records to anyone who will listen, runs his own record label Crate Escape, is involved in a few other record labels and likes drinking sweet premium wine.

Thomas Knak is a danish producer also known as Opiate.
The debut album ‘Objects for an Ideal Home’ was released in 1999 which led to collaborations with Bjørk for her Vespertine album, and later two albums with Alva Noto as Opto. He has released EP´s via April, City Centre, Vertical Form and Morr Music.

We set up Sign Records because we have a passion for music and will release music we think is special. A natural next step was to set up a blog in which we invite friends of the label to share their knowledge of music. The blog will be a platform for introducing music to a wider audience.

One of our favourite ways of discovering new music is by looking at people’s end of year charts. So we’ve invited some of the friends of the label to send us their top picks of 2014, which we’ll be posting over the coming weeks. Although these have come from friends of the label, we’ve still discovered new tracks we’d slept on, so we hope you do too.

In the end it’s all DJ Lunga’s fault. Without the feature about him and his Label Baainar Records in the German magazine BEAT, I’d never (or at least much later) have thought about South African House music. Which would have been a loss.